This fall thousands of middle school students from across the country, including students from Central Pennsylvania, are participating in the 2009 National Engineers Week  Future City Competition which this year has the theme "Conserve and Reuse Our Most Precious Resource - Water."

Sponsored by the nation’s professional engineering community, Future City aims to stir interest in science, technology, engineering and math among young people. Students work in teams under the guidance of a teacher and a volunteer engineer mentor to design and build a city of tomorrow. They must also conduct research for an essay on a pressing social need.

This year, the essay centers on ways to improve water use by creating a home system that minimizes the use of municipal or externally supplied water for its daily requirements.

Future City Competitions will be held in January 2009 in 40 regions across the country. In Central Pennsylvania the competition takes place on January 10 at The Whitaker Center for Science and The Arts in Harrisburg, Pa.

First-place winners from each qualifying regional competition receive an all-expense-paid trip to the 17th annual Future City National Finals in Washington, D.C., February 16-18 during National Engineers Week. National grand prize is a trip to U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. More than 30,000 students from 1,100 middle schools are expected to participate nationwide.

In Future City, the nation’s largest engineering education program and among the most popular, students create cities on computers using the SimCity 4 Deluxe software and then build three-dimensional, tabletop models to scale.

To ensure a level playing field, models must use recycled materials and can cost no more than $100 to build. Students also write brief abstracts describing their city and must present and defend their designs at the competition before a panel of engineer judges who test the depth of the teams’ knowledge.

That knowledge is often extensive, as shown by the essays which require 7th- and 8th-graders to explore complex challenges and ideas that most adults would consider over their heads.

This year’s topic, “Creating a Self Sufficient System within the Home Which Conserves, Recycles and Reuses Existing Water Sources,” should prove particularly fruitful in producing the possible new solutions of the future.

Engineers and researchers understand that developing a home that is self-sustaining and self-sufficient in its water use will be necessary in the future. The essays must describe a home outfitted with existing technologies for improving water use in the home, as well as incorporate new technologies, of the students’ invention, that will either provide a new source of renewable water supply, recycle water within the home, purify the water, or lower the overall water usage of the home. In addition, the system should also seek potential ways to contribute water back to the municipality or water source.

Solving a problem with such global implications as water conservation is certainly no easy task, as many of the engineers, scientists and researchers currently working on such issues can confirm. So then why place that same task into the hands of middle schoolers?

“Our students are highly motivated, super smart and undaunted by tough challenges,” says regional coordinator, Bill Sutton. “There is a can do spirit among these kids that is inspiring and fun to be a part of. I hope everyone in Central Pennsylvania will get behind their school’s contestants and cheer them on to the finals.”

For more information on judging or mentoring in the Future City Competition, visit the Future City website or call 717-319-3409.

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